Ziga: Upcoming House Session an Opportunity to Elect New SIS Committee Chair

Bratislava, September 6 (TASR) - The upcoming parliamentary session will pose a good opportunity to find an acceptable solution to restore the supervisory function of the House over the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) and elect a new chair of the House Committee for the Supervision of SIS, House Vice-chair Peter Ziga (Voice-SD), who heads Parliament in a temporary capacity, stated on Friday. It was opposition MP Gabor Grendel (Slovakia-For the People-KU) who earlier in the day called on Ziga to convene a joint session of the Security and Defence Committee and Committee for the Supervision of SIS, pointing out that ever since the latter committee's chair Maria Kolikova (opposition's SaS) was ousted by the coalition, the committee has been left in a gridlock. Ziga claimed that the supervisory function of the House was "seriously and apparently intentionally" undermined by actions of former committee chair Kolikova. "Several coalition committee members warned Maria Kolikova that such a state of affairs might happen," he said. Parliament ousted Kolikova from the post of chair of the House Committee for Supervision of SIS in late June, with the coalition arguing that she overstepped her powers by filing a complaint with the Prosecutor-General's Office and publicly impugning SIS. They also criticised what they see as her cancellation of the committee session without any reason. Kolikova rejects the accusations and confirmed that SaS will nominate her to the post once again. mf/mcs